flagrantdisregard

Not dead. Busy. And I sort of fell out of the habit. So, here’s what I’ve been up to since April:

• Lots of work on BigHugeLabs.com
• Bought a pet rat ($7) and accoutrements ($92) for the kids.
• Ripped up the weed jungle that my backyard had become and planted Dutch Clover instead of grass. Coming in beautifully. Should control weeds and be virtually maintenance free.
• Two birthday parties. Kids are now 9 and 7.
• Commuting to the library a few days a week to work. This is working out nicely now that the kids are on break. Turns out I’m not allergic to the sun. It is showing up a weakness in my netbook though—the keyboard is fine for browsing the internet but not as good for programming. Probably a new laptop in my future. Probably a MacBook.
• Created another website: ideas.bighugelabs.com
• Restaurant City
• Bought a 13 foot trampoline.
• Cleaned the carburetors on my bike (a 2000 CBR 600 F4, the last model before fuel injection was introduced). It’s the first carb cleaning I’ve ever done but it went really well. I think I could do it again in a under 3 hours. Saved about $350 doing it myself, which is nice.
• Talked to a bunch of sixth graders about my profession. They did not believe I was “the BigHugeLabs guy.”
• Bought a 1 terabyte hard drive for $94. Holy moly.
• Finished two bottles of Scotch.
• Tried doing hundredpushups.com but my shoulder failed me in week 4. Taking it easy until it heals.
• Survived 3 earthquakes.
• Survived taxes.

How’s your summer going?

I update Twitter more frequently than here. Not because I think blogging is dead and Twitter is going to take over. Just because it’s faster to peck out a hundred characters than to write an entire post. So, if you really want to stalk me, for now, that’s the place to do it. ;-)

Play DeepLeap. Addictive, though, I warn you.

• It’s not that I hate my bank–they’re great. It’s just that every time I have to call them I feel a tiny part of my soul blacken and die.
• hunch_staff: Sorry, your topic “Should I eat my children?” was declined. Reason: Gruesome.
• Monsters vs. Aliens was good.
• Words I never imagined would enter my brain: I’m in the market for a trampoline.
• This is what they mean when they say art nourishes the soul (via Waxy). This made me happy. http://soytuaire.labuat.com/
• Daughter: I don’t get it. The higher grade you’re in the smaller your playground.
• I liked the book fair more when someone else paid the bill.
• $20 bills littering playground in form of discarded children’s jackets.
• Note: texting someone “mated” when you meant “mauled” changes the intent *completely*.
• Today’s most pathetic moment: paged house phone to find it so that I could call my cell to find it.

twitter.com/yafd

My first topic—”Could I fight a bear and win?”—is still going strong. At hunch.com.

I sell my photography at Lightproofbox.com, my photo blog. I don’t sell a whole lot, a few photos a month. Some of it is prints but I’d estimate more than half is licenses. Book covers and music mostly, some for ads and signage and the like. But I very rarely see the finished product (here’s one from ‘07, for example).

So, I was super pleased when Shon Kornfeld (thanks, Shon!) contacted me and offered to send me a copy of his debut album Friday Nights.

Not a bad looking cover if I do say so myself. The photo is called Super Slab West. It’s a view of the 91 freeway, looking west, shot from the overpass at Lakeview Ave.